The Australian documentary series Dateline examines the enormous and unprecedented property bubble building in China [video].
According to this Australian documentary, the Chinese government's GDP goals are leading to a massive oversupply of housing and retail; a property bubble of unprecedented scale. Apartment towers, malls and entire cities sit empty while construction continues.
The nonstop construction of uninhabited towers is likened to the building of pyramids: construction that brings no benefit to the living, as there simply aren't enough middle-class Chinese who could afford all the millions of new housing units. As Boing Boing puts it,
"It's symptomatic of the growing divide between China's rich and poor, which has left many Chinese without adequate housing. Unlike the US bubble, the Chinese property bubble isn't founded on cheap credit, which makes the analyst hosting the show believe that it won't burst in the same way as the American one."
FULL STORY: China's housing bubble: ghost malls, ghost highrises,
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research